Preview

More by Matthew Waterson

Paul Kildea In November 1838, Frederic Chopin, George Sand, and her two children sailed to Majorca to escape the Parisian winter. They settled in an abandoned monastery at Valldemossa in the mountains above Palma, where Chopin finished what would eventually be recognized as one of the great and revolutionary works of musical Romanticism: his 24 Preludes. There was scarcely a decent piano on the island, so Chopin worked on a small pianino made by a local craftsman, Juan Bauza.

Chopin's Piano traces the history of Chopin's 24 Preludes through the instruments on which they were played, the pianists who interpreted them, and the traditions they came to represent. Yet it begins and ends with the Majorcan pianino, which assumed an astonishing cultural potency during the Second World War as it became, for the Nazis, a symbol of the man and music they were determined to appropriate as their own.

After Chopin, the unexpected hero of Chopin's Piano is the great keyboard player Wanda Landowska, who rescued the pianino from Valldemossa in 1913 and who would later become one of the most influential artistic figures of the 20th century. Paul Kildea shows how her story resonates with Chopin's, simultaneously distilling part of the cultural and political history of mid-20th-century Europe and the US.

Martin Meredith Southern Africa was once regarded as a worthless jumble of British colonies, Boer republics, and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. But then prospectors chanced upon the world’s richest deposits of diamonds and gold, setting off a titanic struggle between the British and the Boers for control of the land. The result was the costliest, bloodiest, and most humiliating war that Britain had waged in nearly a century, and the devastation of the Boer republics.

The New Yorker calls this magisterial account of those years “[an] astute history.…Meredith expertly shows how the exigencies of the diamond (and then gold) rush laid the foundation for apartheid.”

Jonathan Eyers Everyone knows the story of the Titanic, but in terms of loss of life that catastrophe doesn't even figure as one of the 50 worst maritime disasters of the last three hundred years. The causes of disaster are legion: besides icebergs and enemy torpedoes, ships have been sunk by fire, explosions, flooding, capsizing, storms, collisions and human error.

With disasters from all over the world, these are stories of the people - whether they lived or died - as well as the ships. They are stories of tragedy, war, heroism and cowardice, greed and sacrifice. Only for the lucky few were they also stories of rescue and survival.

Venki Ramakrishnan Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome - an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms - that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us.

Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases.

But this is also a human story of Ramakrishnan's unlikely journey, from his first fumbling experiments in a biology lab to being the dark horse in a fierce competition with some of the world's best scientists. In the end, Gene Machine is a frank insider's account of the pursuit of high-stakes science.

Rangan Chatterjee A much-needed program to prevent and reverse disease, and discover a path to sustainable, long-term health from an acclaimed international doctor and star of the BBC program Doctor in the House.

How to Make Disease Disappear is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee’s revolutionary, yet simple guide to better health - a much-needed, accessible plan that will help you take back control of your health and your life.

A physician dedicated to finding the root cause of ill health rather than simply suppressing symptoms with drugs, Dr. Chatterjee passionately advocates and follows a philosophy that lifestyle and nutrition are first-line medicine and the cornerstone of good health. Drawing on cutting edge research and his own experiences as a doctor, he argues that the secret to preventing disease and achieving wellness revolves around four critical pillars: food, relaxation, sleep, and movement. By making small, incremental changes in each of these key areas, you can create and maintain good health - and alleviate and prevent illness. As Dr. Chatterjee, reveals we can reverse and make disease disappear without a complete overhaul of our lifestyle.

His dynamic, user-friendly approach is not about excelling at any one pillar. What matters is balance in every area of your life, which includes:
Me-time every day
An electronic-free Sabbath once a week
Retraining your taste buds
Daily micro-fasts
Movement snacking
A bedtime routine
Practical and life-changing, How to Make Disease Disappear is an inspiring and easy-to-follow guide to better health and happiness.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Andrew Maynard Learn how movies reveal the future of technology.

Fans of The Science of Interstellar, The Second Machine Age, and Physics of the Future will love Films from the Future.

Science, technology, and society: In Films from the Future, former physicist Andrew Maynard threads together his love of science-fiction movies with his expertise on emerging technologies to engage, entertain, and make you think about the relationship between technology and society. Through the imagination and creativity of science-fiction movies, Maynard introduces listeners to the profound capabilities presented by new and emerging technologies, and the complex personal and societal challenges they present.

The future of artificial intelligence and other technologies: Each movie in the book provides the starting point for exploring key technologies and trends, from genetic engineering (Jurassic Park) and brain-enhancing drugs (Limitless) to human augmentation (Ghost in the Shell) and artificial intelligence (Ex Machina). These are woven together with emerging ideas on technological convergence and responsible and ethical innovation, to provide a sweeping perspective on where our technologies are taking us and how we ensure this is where we want to go.

The enlightening science and philosophies of movies: With each examination of 12 movies, you will take a progressive journey through the fascinating worlds of biological and genetic manipulation, human enhancement and cyber technologies, and nanotechnology. Maynard reveals that the fantastical worlds of the movies might not be as impossible as we think. With a focus on hard science, economics, the social implications of technological feats, and the movies that could very well become our real-life future, Films from the Future will be sure to educate and entertain.

Christian Jennings Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from malaria. No one's quite sure of the exact number. It's just too difficult to keep track of the disease as it tears through more than 200 million cases each year, many of them in countries wracked by war and blighted by other problems. What is certain is that it is people living in these situations and, more specifically, children aged under five, who suffer disproportionately. It is for these areas that universities and NGOs, drugs companies, governments and philanthropists from around the world are united in an ongoing battle against the disease.

Malaria has been with us for thousands of years. The Ancient Egyptians had it; Chinese dynasties before them. In some arenas during the Second World War, more soldiers were hospitalized by malaria than by injuries sustained during fighting. Today, malaria remains one of the most resilient and most adaptive diseases out there, constantly mutating as it finds ways around the drugs deployed to combat it.

One of the key parts of the problem is the method by which malaria transmits itself from person to person: Mosquito bites. Breeding, feeding and transmitting at an incredible rate, mosquitoes are unavoidable in whatever environment they live. Now, cutting edge science is being called upon to help save lives lost to malaria. By genetically modifying the mosquitoes, scientists are aiming to turn the disease's vector against itself, severing the link that enables malaria to spread.

In The Deadly Air, Christian Jennings mixes together his own experiences of suffering from malaria with a history of mankind's struggle with the disease and an account of the scientists engaged in the modification of the mosquito's genome. Rich in detail and scientific intrigue, The Deadly Air is the story of malaria and of the millions of lives at stake in our fight against it.

Bertrand M. Patenaude In Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary, Stanford University lecturer Bertrand M. Patenaude tells the dramatic story of Leon Trotsky's final years in exile in Mexico. Shedding new light on Trotsky's tumultuous friendship with painter Diego Rivera, his affair with Rivera’s wife Frida Kahlo, and his torment as his family and comrades become victims of the Great Terror, Trotsky: Downfall ofa Revolutionary brilliantly illuminates the fateful and dramatic life of one of history's most famous yet elusive figures.

Devin Murphy In the tradition of All the Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale comes an incandescent debut novel about a young Dutch man who comes of age during the perilousness of World War II.

Beginning in the summer of 1939, 14-year-old Jacob Koopman and his older brother, Edwin, enjoy lives of prosperity and quiet contentment. Many of the residents in their small Dutch town have some connection to the Koopman lightbulb factory, and the locals hold the family in high esteem.

On days when they aren't playing with friends, Jacob and Edwin help their uncle Martin on his fishing boat in the North Sea, where German ships have become a common sight. But conflict still seems unthinkable, even as the boys' father naively sends his sons to a Hitler Youth Camp in an effort to secure German business for the factory.

When war breaks out, Jacob's world is thrown into chaos. The Boat Runner follows Jacob over the course of four years, through the forests of France, on the stormy beaches of England, and deep within the secret missions of the German navy, where he is confronted with the moral dilemma that will change his life - and his life's mission - forever.

Epic in scope and featuring a thrilling narrative with precise, elegant language, The Boat Runner tells the little-known story of the young Dutch boys who were thrown into the Nazi campaign as well as the brave boatmen who risked everything to give Jewish refugees safe passage to land abroad. Through one boy's harrowing tale of personal redemption, here is a novel about the power of people's stories and voices to shine light through our darkest days, until only love prevails.

Ulrich Raulff & Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp - translator Horses and humans share an ancient, profoundly complex relationship. Once our most indispensable companions, horses were for millennia essential in helping build our cities, farms, and industries. But during the 20th century, in an increasingly mechanized society, they began to disappear from human history.

In this esoteric and rich tribute, award-winning historian Ulrich Raulff chronicles the dramatic story of this most spectacular creature, thoroughly examining how they've been muses and brothers in arms, neglected and sacrificed in war yet memorialized in paintings, sculpture, and novels - and ultimately marginalized on racetracks and in pony clubs.

Elegiac and absorbing, Farewell to the Horse paints a stunning panorama of a world shaped by hooves, and the imprint left on humankind.

Jesse Norman A dazzlingly original account of the life and thought of Adam Smith, the greatest economist of all time.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) is now widely regarded as the greatest economist of all time. But what he really thought, and the implications of his ideas, remain fiercely contested. Was he an eloquent advocate of capitalism and individual freedom? A prime mover of "market fundamentalism"? An apologist for human selfishness? Or something else entirely?

In Adam Smith, political philosopher Jesse Norman dispels the myths and caricatures, and provides a far more complex portrait of the man. Offering a highly engaging account of Smith's life and times, Norman explores his work as a whole and traces his influence over two centuries to the present day. Finally, he shows how a proper understanding of Smith can help us address the problems of modern capitalism.

The Smith who emerges from this audiobook is not only the greatest of all economists, but a pioneering theorist of moral philosophy, culture, and society.

Steven Hartov In the spring of 1944, I realized that I was not going to survive the war....

Shtefan Brandt, adjutant to a colonel of the Waffen SS, has made it through the war so far in spite of his commander’s habit of bringing his staff into combat, and a pair of secrets that are far more dangerous than the battlefield. Shtefan is a Mischling and one of the thousands of German citizens of Jewish descent who have avoided the death camps by concealing themselves in the ranks of the German army. And he is in love with Gabrielle Belmont, the colonel’s French mistress. Either of those facts could soon mean his end, were Colonel Erich Himmel to notice.

Colonel Himmel has other concerns, however. He can see the war’s end on the horizon and recognizes that he is not on the winning side, no matter what the reports from Hitler’s generals may say. So he has taken matters into his own hands, hatching a plot to escape Europe. To fund his new life, he plans to steal a fortune from the encroaching Allies. A fortune that Shtefan, in turn, plans to steal from him....

Atmospheric and intense, The Soul of a Thief captures the turbulent emotional rush of those caught behind the lines of occupied France, where one false step could spell death, and every day brings a new struggle to survive.

Meredith Hindley In November 1942, as a part of Operation Torch, 33,000 American soldiers sailed undetected across the Atlantic and stormed the beaches of French Morocco. Seventy-four hours later, the Americans controlled the country and one of the most valuable wartime ports: Casablanca.

In the years preceding, Casablanca had evolved from an exotic travel destination to a key military target after France's surrender to Germany. Jewish refugees from Europe poured in, hoping to obtain visas and passage to the United States and beyond. Nazi agents and collaborators infiltrated the city in search of power and loyalty. The resistance was not far behind, as shopkeepers, celebrities, former French Foreign Legionnaires, and disgruntled bureaucrats formed a network of Allied spies. But once in American hands, Casablanca became a crucial logistical hub in the fight against Germany - and the site of Roosevelt and Churchill's demand for "unconditional surrender".

Rife with rogue soldiers, power grabs, and diplomatic intrigue, Destination Casablanca is the riveting and untold story of this glamorous city - memorialized in the classic film - at the heart of World War II.

Sasha Abramsky Why is an unarmed young black woman who knocks on a stranger's front door to ask for help after her car breaks down perceived to be so threatening that he shoots her dead? Why do we fear infrequent acts of terrorism more than far more common acts of violence? Why does a disease like Ebola, which killed only a handful of Americans, provoke panic whereas the flu - which kills tens of thousands each year - is dismissed with a yawn?

Jumping at Shadows is Sasha Abramsky's searing account of America's most dangerous epidemic: irrational fear. Taking listeners on a dramatic journey through a divided nation, where everything from immigration to disease, gun control to health care has become fodder for fearmongers and conspiracists, he delivers an eye-popping analysis of our misconceptions about risk and threats. What emerges is a shocking portrait of a political and cultural landscape that is, increasingly, defined by our worst fears and rampant anxieties.

Ultimately, Abramsky shows that how we calculate risk and deal with fear can teach us a great deal about ourselves, exposing deeply ingrained strains of racism, classism, and xenophobia within our culture as well as our growing susceptibility to the toxic messages of demagogues.

Matthew Waterson The Highway Code is an essential reading for every road user in England, Scotland and Wales. This Code applies to all road users including drivers, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and horse riders. It is aimed at ensuring road safety. Many of the rules of the Code are legal requirements and road users that do not comply may be fined, given points on driving licence, disqualified, or in serious cases, sent to prison.
This Highway Code audiobook includes the Highway Code that contains eighteen chapters that cover traffic regulations, laws and penalties. The text was sourced from the latest edition of The Official Highway Code, and reproduced under the terms of the Open Government Licence.

Please note: This audiobook is in English.

Alex Perry As seen in TheNew Yorker.

An unprecedented look inside a deadly and obscenely wealthy branch of the Italian mafia and the electrifying story of the women who risked everything to bring them down.

The Calabrian Mafia - known as the ’Ndrangheta - is one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates in the world, with branches stretching from America to Australia. It controls 70 percent of the cocaine and heroin supply in Europe, manages billion-dollar extortion rackets, brokers illegal arms deals - supplying weapons to criminals and terrorists - and plunders the treasuries of both Italy and the European Union.

The ’Ndrangheta’s power derives from a macho mix of violence and silence - omertà. Yet it endures because of family ties: you are born into the syndicate, or you marry in. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave and kill your own father, brother, sister, or mother in cold blood before you betray The Family. Accompanying the ’Ndrangheta’s reverence for tradition and history is a violent misogyny among its men. Women are viewed as chattel, bargaining chips for building and maintaining clan alliances and beatings - and worse - are routine.

In 2009, after one abused ’Ndrangheta wife was murdered for turning state’s evidence, prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti considered a tantalizing possibility: that the ’Ndrangheta’s sexism might be its greatest flaw - and her most effective weapon. Approaching two more mafia wives, Alessandra persuaded them to testify in return for a new future for themselves and their children.

A feminist saga of true crime and justice, The Good Mothers is the riveting story of a high-stakes battle pitting a brilliant, driven woman fighting to save a nation against ruthless mafiosi fighting for their existence. Caught in the middle are three women fighting for their children and their lives. Not all will survive.

John C. Hulsman Our baffling new multipolar world grows ever more complex, desperately calling for new ways of thinking, particularly when it comes to political risk. To Dare More Boldly provides those ways, telling the story of the rise of political risk analysis, both as a discipline and a lucrative high-stakes industry that guides the strategic decisions of corporations and governments around the world. It assesses why recent predictions have gone so wrong and boldly puts forward 10 analytical commandments that can stand the test of time.

Written by one of the field's leading practitioners, this incisive book derives these indelible rules of the game from a wide-ranging and entertaining survey of world history. John Hulsman looks at examples as seemingly unconnected as the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Third Crusade, the Italian Renaissance, America's founders, Napoleon, the Battle of Gettysburg, the British Empire, the Kaiser's Germany, the breakup of the Beatles, Charles Manson, and Deng Xiaoping's China. Hulsman makes sense of yesterday's world, and in doing so provides an invaluable conceptual tool kit for navigating today's.

David Conn In 2015, FIFA - the multibillion-dollar governing body of the world's most loved sport - was brought down by allegations of industrial-scale bribes, kickbacks, money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion. Beginning with early morning raids in Zurich and the indictment of 27 executives by the US Department of Justice, the rottenness at the core of FIFA seemed to extend throughout all of soccer, from the decision to send the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar to lesser known cases of embezzlement from Trinidad to South Africa.

David Conn writes the definitive account of FIFA's rise and fall, covering in great detail the corruption allegations and the series of scandals that continued to shake the public's trust in the organization. The Fall of the House of FIFA situates FIFA's unraveling amid revealing human portraits of soccer legends such as Michel Platini and Franz Beckenbauer and features an exclusive interview with former president Sepp Blatter. Even as he chronicles the biggest sport scandal of all time, Conn infuses the book with a passionate love of the game, delivering an irresistible audiobook.

Michael Sims A spine-tingling new collection of the best Victorian ghost stories—as suspenseful and entertaining as anything written today.

Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and W. F. Harvey. Amelia B. Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. W. Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.

Fay Weldon They thought they were attending a benign military lecture at the illustrious Shrapnel Academy, housed in one of England's grand manors and dedicated to the memory of Henry Shrapnel, genius inventor of the cannonball. But the weekend is not peaceful. Perhaps benign militarism is always a false conceit.

Septuagenarian General Leo Makeshift, charged with delivering the annual Wellington lecture, arrives in a black Rolls-Royce. The knee under his hand belongs to his current mistress, Bella, who wars a tight black skirt and seamed stockings for the occasion. (Bella is considerably younger than the general.) Medusa, or "Mew," on the other hand, hitchhikes to Shrapnel after the gas runs out on her motorbike. Mew is the correspondent from Woman's Times and, yes, it was a mistake to allow a feminist reporter on the scene.

On the greeting committee are Joan Lumb, the institute's dictatorial director, her lithesome secretary, Muffin, and Acorn the butler, a stunningly handsome South African whose army of Third World servants is primed to rebel against the ruling class.

Fate provides a snowstorm, making escape impossible; lust, jealousy, bigotry, chauvinism, and pure greed provide the other essential ingredients for all-out war during the Wellington weekend - between Upstairs and Downstairs, between men and women, between First and Third Worlds, between the fiercest of sexual rivals. Speculation about the occupancy of a given bed or the espousal of a given cause is unlikely to prove correct, yet to attempt it is irresistible.

As a chronicler, Fay Weldon has never been more brilliant or more ruthless about the folly of human relations. The Shrapnel Academy is a devastating update of the English country house novel, as savagely funny as it is topical.

Chaz Brenchley Jonathan wakes up in hospital and is told he has been involved in a car crash. He doesn't remember the last three months, and the doctors say he's only been there three days. He also doesn't remember the woman by his bedside who says she is his wife, but she has the pictures that seem to prove it.

Gillian White “How the people love a sinner, especially when she is a woman. Witch! Witch!”

The Dark End of the Street is a television program that pries into the business of Barry and Cheryl Higgins and their three small children, uncovering every nasty aspect of their lives on welfare in front of a fascinated and disgusted audience. The couple didn’t get rich off the wildly successful reality show, though, so why would anyone want to kidnap the kids? When the two older children are found, there is little doubt that Cheryl planned their disappearance to win the public’s affection and boost the show’s ratings. As the media and the legal system condemn Cheryl, one question remains: Where is baby Cara?

Gillian White adeptly demonstrates how the public’s need to know and to judge - and how people can profit from those impulses - is a modern kind of witch hunt.

Ciarán Collins Meet Charlie. People think he's crazy. But he's not. People think he's stupid. But he's not. People think he's innocent...He's the Gamal. Charlie has a story to tell, about his best friends Sinead and James and the bad things that happened. But he can't tell it yet, at least not 'til he's worked out where the beginning is. Is the beginning long ago when Sinead first spoke up for him after Charlie got in trouble at school for the millionth time? Or was it later, when Sinead and James followed the music and found each other? Or was it later still on that terrible night when something unspeakable happened after closing time and someone chose to turn a blind eye? Charlie has promised Dr Quinn he'll write 1,000 words a day, but it's hard to know which words to write. And which secrets to tell. This is the story of the dark heart of an Irish village, of how daring to be different can be dangerous, and how there is nothing a person will not do for love. Exhilarating, bitingly funny and unforgettably poignant, this is a story like no other. This is the story of the Gamal.

Ben Pester & Dick Durham (introduction) This charming account of the voyage of two men in a small boat half way round the world from Plymouth to New Zealand in 1953 is a rare insight into a time, not long ago, when sailors had no GPS, electronics, radio or any of the mod cons that we take for granted today. Without lifejacket or a life raft, they 'just took what came along', hand steering all the way, navigating by sextant, hand-cranking their engine and using oil lamps for light at night and for navigation. Sailors will be staggered how primitive conditions were only a few decades ago, even though it was the norm at the time. Part travelogue and part adventure story, the two friends encountered drunken harbor masters, the mafia, the legacy of slavery and lost civilizations in the Pacific. Beautifully written, vivid in its descriptions of the two men's exploits ashore and on board, this quirky and entertaining audiobook will be a fascinating listen for sailors and non-sailors alike.

"A compelling story - I feel like I have sailed with them." (Yachting Monthly)

Freda Warrington The legend returns... It is seven years since a stake was driven through the heart of the infamous Count Dracula. Seven years which have not eradicated the terrible memories for Jonathan and Mina Harker, who now have a young son. To lay their memories to rest they return to Transylvania, and can find no trace of the horrific events. But, beneath the earth, Dracula's soul lies in limbo, waiting for the Lifeblood that will revive him....

Raffaella Barker In April 1946 Michael returns from war and finds he cannot face the life that awaits him at home. Impulsively he leaps on a train to the western tip of Cornwall, and in doing so changes his destiny. He finds himself in a bohemian colony of artists gathered on the Cornish coast, and his fate is shaped by his heart, his new environment, and the fragmented Britain to which he has returned.

More than fifty years later, a man arrives in Norfolk to claim—reluctantly—his inheritance: An abandoned lighthouse, half hidden in the shadows of the past, now ready to cast its beam forward. Kit, a successful businessman, is fairly certain he wants no part in this legacy.

In a farmhouse, a woman falters in the middle of her life. Louisa’s children are leaving home and the constant push and pull of family life has turned like the tide of the Norfolk sea—she is suspended, without direction. When Kit and Louisa meet, neither can escape the consequences of Michael’s split-second decision all those years ago.

Moving between the postwar artists’ colony in Cornwall and present-day Norfolk, Raffaella Barker’s new novel explores the secrets and flaws that can shape generations. From a Distance is a nuanced and compelling story of human connection and our desire to belong.

Alex Renton There are 59 billion animals alive at any one time, farmed for their meat. The world’s domestic cattle weigh 16 times as much as all the wild animals on the planet put together. Sixty percent of the globe’s agricultural land is used for beef production, from growing grain to raising cows.Since the early 20th century, industrial farming and global capitalism have worked hand-in-hand to provide meat at an ever-cheaper price. And our appetites, so tempted, have led us to consume more and more animals. In the US, each citizen eats on average 120 kg of meat per year. And they're not alone. Our insatiable desire for meat has defined how we use our planet.

But cheap meat comes at a price. Planet Carnivore gets under the skin of the health problems that over-consumption brings; of modern farming’s destructive use of resources; and of the stretched and strained farms and abattoirs that lead to horsemeat in beef burgers and challenging moral questions about our relationship with our food.

Alex Renton’s brilliantly researched, utterly compelling Guardian Short serves up the grisly stories, and also looks at how we are beginning to try and pay the cheap meat bill, from innovative twists on current techniques to cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs.

Christian Goeschel From 1934 until 1944, Mussolini met Hitler numerous times, and the two developed a relationship that deeply affected both countries. While Germany is generally regarded as the senior power, Christian Goeschel demonstrates just how much history has underrepresented Mussolini's influence on his German ally.

Goeschel, a scholar of 20th-century Germany and Italy, revisits all of Mussolini and Hitler's key meetings and asks how these meetings constructed a powerful image of a strong Fascist-Nazi relationship that still resonates with the general public. His portrait of Mussolini draws on sources ranging beyond political history to reveal a leader who, at times, shaped Hitler's decisions and was not the gullible buffoon he's often portrayed as. The first comprehensive study of the Mussolini-Hitler relationship, this book is a must-listen for scholars and anyone interested in the history of European fascism, World War II, or political leadership.